You get arrested for Monsterphilia where I come from.
What They Say:
A day at Monsterphilia turns deadly when some of the monsters escape. While Ais tracks them down, a powerful monster attacks Lefiya and the twins.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Remember Monsterphilia from the original series? Things were going well, other than maybe Bell’s inexplicable attachment to some girl named Ais (I hear she may appear once or twice in this show). Still, Hestia was doing her best to help him progress, and it showed how deep their connection was even with a far more boring character coming between them (and having no interest in the matter herself). I don’t mean to imply that that series was ever any sort of masterpiece; it was dumb fun at best, but thankfully it managed to be consistent enough that you could generally count on that dumb fun and enjoy yourself. I still don’t know what Sword Oratoria is trying to be, or frankly why it even exists. At this point I’m just going to declare Lefiya the actual main character, because three episodes in we’ve gotten so little of Ais being a character at all that she’s way down the list of those who would actually deserve to be called the protagonist.
So what is the series doing with Lefiya as the lead? The fantasies about Ais are reduced in this episode but still plenty prominent; while boobs were the theme of most fanservice last time, it’s all about direct kisses between Ais and another girl in her Familia this time (with another cameo of the other pair to remind us that things were a bit more interesting and likable on that side). But when she’s not thinking about that (which is maybe half of the time if we’re lucky), she ruminates on her position in the crew and whether she deserves to stand alongside the likes of Ais and other adventurers she considers far better than herself. This kind of inferiority complex is a great quality to explore in a protagonist, another reason that she most definitely fits that role. If we get any implication of a thought from Ais this episode, it was unsubstantial enough that I’ve already forgotten it. But hey, there’s Lefiya, and she has some amount of depth, relatively speaking!
This brings us to Monsterphilia, as silly a name as it ever was. Last episode assured us that these girls having nothing to do was not the best for having anything to watch other than repetitive fanservice, so the monsters that attack do bring some hope that we’ll finally get to see these characters shine and grow. This is the moment at which Lefiya ensures that nobody can claim anyone else is the character we’re supposed to be focusing on, and overcomes her lesser skills to be the most impressive fighter in the group. But wait, this all seems awfully familiar. Between her love of Ais (which is not reciprocated in any way, of course), her status as the character we get the most of in terms of thoughts, and her growth throughout difficult battles against monsters that she wants to be able to combat on the level of Ais and even on a level beyond such that she could conceivably save Ais from some in the future… she’s just Bell again. Not only does this give a different impression of what the show’s goal is, it makes it out to be the least valuable of all the possibilities floated around thus far, as choosing to tell essentially the same story again with a less interesting cast instead of having an actual sequel (at least for now) is absolutely befuddling.
In Summary:
In the first episode, it seemed like this could be a chance to better explore the character of Ais and develop her for future appearances in the story proper. In the second, it devolved into little more than a fanservice fest with some hope for something else. Now, it seems like it might as well be a remake of the original without any of the fun character dynamics. With that, I drop it.
Grade: C+
Streamed By: Anime Strike
Review Equipment:
Roku 3, Sceptre X425BV-FHD 42″ Class LCD HDTV.